


Cousin

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-09
Updated: 2009-05-25
Packaged: 2019-01-19 19:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12416196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: A burn mark on a tapestry can only erase so much.





	1. it burns bright at the darkest hour

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

It is a strange thing to arrange a secret meeting with one’s own cousin. It is a stranger thing when one is a Black: family means everything, and while growing up my cousins were the only truly acceptable playmates to have. (Other families always had skeletons in the closet. Black were, naturally, _toujours pur._ )

Yet here I was. In Hogsmeade, waiting for her. Alone for once, having brushed off James with some half-hearted excuse about finding him a birthday present. “So if you want anything, piss off for an hour.” That’s what I had said. 

It was only the third Hogsmeade visit I had ever been on, and because of her – because of familial love and momentary hatred –  I was standing in the snow waiting for her, when I could have been throwing my allowance at sweets and dungbombs. When I could have been getting a Butterbeer with a still-devestated Cissy, who I had spent more time with in the past two weeks than in the past two years, to remind her that no one else would leave her like this.

I rocked from one foot to the other at the end of the street. The Shrieking Shack – rumoured to be haunted by the locals – was off to my right, and the snow crunched beneath my boots as my shifting weight packed it tighter. I hated that feeling, of compacting snow beneath my feet. It made a sound and had a texture that sent shivers down my spine.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. This could get me into more trouble than anything else. More than the Sorting fiasco of two years previous, more than when James had pointedly told Reg, in public, that he didn’t associate with people who said ‘mudblood’. Maybe even more trouble than when I threw Mother’s wand across the room a few weeks previous, to stop her from blasting the tapestry. (I knew, now, what the burn marks meant.) 

“Sirius,” she said simply, beside me suddenly. I hadn’t started, because Blacks simply do not show surprise, and I was glad to see that no matter what else had happened, she still greeted people in as few syllables as possible, and still blinked just a moment too long when she wanted to show you some affection. 

(But she’d left without saying goodbye to anyone. She’d created a rift in the family and destroyed your Aunt and Uncle. Your cousins. She’d destroyed you as if she'd never loved you.)

“Are we staying here? In the snow?” I sounded less angry than I was. I hadn't seen her since the summer, and I'd thought everything was fine, then.

She shook her head. “If you want to, I thought you might come see our house for an hour or two.”  

“Our house?” I spit. It was very much a question, despite my tone. Letters and dinners with Reg and Cissy were one thing, but to hear it said – and with so much pleasantness – from her was something else. (Something real. Married. To _him_.)

“Don’t, Sirius.” 

“Don’t what? Don’t pretend it’s not ok? Don’t pretend you haven’t left me along in that _house_? Don’t pretend that your mother and father couldn’t even be seen in _public_ , they’re so ashamed? And Bella! And Cissy! Don’t pretend that all Christmas, everyone kept us locked up so we wouldn’t be next? I’m in _Gryffindor_ , Andromeda! And Reg doesn’t under _stand_! Do you know? Do you even know what that’s like there, now?” I swung my arms up in frustration, in abomination, and immediately she caught them and pinned them to my sides.

“Sirius, for goodness’ sake, we’re still in public. We’re still Blacks.” She spoke quickly, venomously, and quietly. Quick to stop the public outburst, the embarrassment. The going against social niceties. 

The irony was not lost on me. “That’s rich, from you.”

She paused, made a throaty sound that was almost a laugh, and blinked a moment too long. “You’re still a Black, anyway. And heir. And we were not raised to throw tantrums in public.” She took my hand, held firm when I tried to snatch it away.

“You don’t even know what you’ve done,” I said sullenly. “You’re not even on the tapestry.”

She dropped my hand suddenly and shifted her weight, snow crunching and my back shivering. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” A pause, as if she didn’t care. “Who did it?”

“Mother.” She said nothing, so I continued. “She thinks all my friends are bloodtraitors, now. I’m not allowed to go to James’ on holidays. I can’t even talk about the girls in my year: they’re all half-blood at best.”

“I _know_ ,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard. I was the odd one out for years, Sirius.”

“You were never. You were never different.”

She sighed, as though I could never understand her struggles. As if she'd always stood out. (It occurred to me, two years later, that the appearance of normalcy was harder.) She held out her hand once more. “Do you want to come see where we live? Where I live? I made cake for you. By myself, and everything. No house elf.”

I looked at her hand. The hand of my favourite cousin. The hand that momentarily ruined (and eventually saved) my happiness.

“Yeah. Yeah I would.”

 

**A/N**

So I'm going to try my hand at delving into the world of the Blacks. Sirius and Regulus' relationship has interested me for a while, but I felt like it would be so much more fun to take on the first scandal that hits the Black family. Sirius was a very loyal person, and despite all else, I think his loyalties must have wavered back and forth, stretched in many directions, before he finally ran away. I know that I'm fudging the timeline ever so slightly, but I think you can all forgive me and review anyways, yes? 


	2. it is surrounded by demons and fire

There she is, ten or twelve seats down the table in the Great Hall, twirling mudblood hair around her mudblood finger, flirting with Frank Longbottom (what would the fifth year see in such a third year, anyway?) and giggling in the most irritating way possible.

(Sirius has forgotten that before the holidays, she was top of the class, quite funny, and that he’d contemplated whether or not to fancy her.)

“Who the fuck does she think she is?” he spits aloud before he can think.

James, across from him, glances up from the cottage pie he’d been proclaiming glorious, and raises his eyebrows. “Feeling bitter today, are we?”

Sirius stabs his fork at his meat sullenly. “She’ll ruin him,” he states simply. 

(Like he ruined her. Like the fucking mudblood ruined her.)

James looks down the table and, from the choked back displeasure in his face, finds what Sirius has been staring at. “He’s too old for her,” he says warily – almost as if he’s concerned for the mudblood.

Sirius fails to notice the difference in their tones. It only matters that his friend agrees. And he must do something – anything – to stop it happening again. To save Frank. To save him from mudbloods and screaming and banging doors. Blasts and threads and silvery hair crying under bodiless houselves. To save him from what mudbloods do.

( _Crucio, Crucio_ , she’d whispered wandlessly. _What will we do, Sirius? We are ruined. We’ll never see her again. We are ruined._ )

He waits until she has to leave. He follows. He is vaguely aware that James is eight steps back, both catching up and wrapping tarts in napkins to be eaten in class. She turns left. He follows.

“Evans.”

She stops and turns, smiles politely. “Hi Sirius.”

He walks up to her until he is far too close, until he can count the freckles and note the eyelash that has broken away from its companions and curls down to stab her eye when she blinks. 

(He knows someone else who broke away, who stabbed that thing she was supposed to uphold.)   


She steps back, until he is a comfortable distance. 

“You,” Sirius says slowly, emphasizing every syllable,” will _never_ be good enough for him. You will _never_ make him like you. I will not allow you to destroy him.”

She is clearly confused, and visibly intimidated by the angry boy in front of her. “I don’t know what you’re –”

“DON’T LIE!” He grabs her forearm and pulls her forward forcefully. “You’re a _mudblood_! You’ll ruin him! How _dare_ you! How – oomph.”

Sirius is on the ground, and his face hurts. James is standing above him, clutching at his hand.

(It hurts the most to be hit by your brother.)   


“Fuck you, Black,” he says. “Andromeda made a choice. Deal with it.” James reaches a hand toward Lily and she shakes her head quickly, and appears to be in shock. James stalks off, and Sirius knows they’ll come to blows tonight in the dorm.  


He picks himself up and realizes that the momentum behind his rage is gone. He is angry, but not at her. He hates the mudblood, but not her. He watches her mouth his cousin’s name silently, and her eyes – still unknowingly being stabbed – widen in realization.

He is about to say something that resembles an apology, when she strides forward and kicks his shin. Hard.   


“If I was like you,” she says, “I would go find a pure-blood to beat up, now.” She is angry, and her red cheeks look ridiculous. “As it is,” she continues, “my sister gave me a curling iron for Christmas, because she knows it doesn’t work here. Potter’s right, the rest of us deal with it. You should too.”

Sirius is too angry and hurt to deal with anything. 

(He will eat with Narcissa and Regulus for the rest of the week. Blacks are known for holding a grudge.) 


End file.
